Andrew Dessler

profile picture pupdate: strong consensus for: dog, but more professional. Introducing my new profile pic:

.@matthewgburgess pointed me to a good Economist article that makes basically the same point economist.com/interactive/br…

On The Climate Brink, I write about how hard it is to predict the future of our energy system. The failure of past predictions should make us hesitant to put too much faith in future predictions.

Two things can be true: • RCP8.5 was never a realistic "business as usual" scenario • The world has made real progress bending the emissions curve downward @Peters_Glen, Piers Forster, and I explain in a new article (link below). 1/11

I've been updating the figures and adding new ones. Check out the github repository to see the latest and greatest.

here is coal in the same units as solar & wind. note that this is total coal consumption, not just electricity from coal

These plots of actual changes in energy produced vs. what the experts predicted tell an important story. I've created updated plots, and you can get the code to reproduce them, or make other versions, here: github.com/aedessler/EIA-…

@WHPAADDD good idea

@AndrewDessler makes more sense to have all charts in same units

Why is admitting that climate change is real such a personal issue to so many people? Is your mother an oil rig?

Interesting new paper documents clearly how the IAEA has been overestimating the growth of nuclear time and time again. It's the inverse of what I've documented for solar and batteries. doi.org/10.1016/j.erss…

The collapse of trust in science is going to go down in history as one of the most sad, bizarre, and destructive social contagions of modern times. We fed billions, cured diseases and powered nations - yet people ran toward conspiracies instead.

@hausfath @tomfid I would not be surprised if your post was affecting the odds, so the fact that the odds are close to yours is not a coincidence.

@tomfid @AndrewDessler They do have a 2026 bet (though I don't participate). Oddly enough their odds for #2 are pretty close to mine (though they are just using GISTEMP rather than the average of groups, which matters a bit for the odds): polymarket.com/event/where-wi…

On The Climate Brink, Zeke @hausfath has a new prediction for 2026 and 2027 temperatures. I'm heading over to polymarket to put my entire 401K on 1.6C for 2026!

@hausfath I've been reading Hansen

@AndrewDessler Bold to be outside the confidence intervals 😉

I've updated my 2026 and 2027 annual temperature forecasts in light of the strong El Nino forecast (and 2026 data to-date) over at the Climate Brink, as well as methodological changes for more robust uncertainties. Both are now higher than they were at the start of the year.

@CColose this taxonomy is useful. in the climate realm, there are few "crackpots". rather, it's mostly "conspiracy" mode.

Two sides of the climate skeptic realm

On The Climate Brink, I've posted another draft chapter from my upcoming book on climate risk. The chapter is on Transition Risk.